The parking garage at Claibone Avenue and Gravier Street in downtown New Orleans where Jake Richardson 19, fell to his death after a recent New Orleans Saints game. Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune

But more than 800 miles away, in Clarksville, Ohio, a rural town with a population of just 548, Jake's uncle, John Tissandier, is struggling with anger and regret. Tissandier is angry that the coroner's office is considering the possibility his nephew might have killed himself even though he believes footage from a security camera shows it was nothing more than an accident. He says Jake had a sleepwalking problem that put him in peril, but family members failed to recognize the seriousness of the problem while there was still time to help him.

Jake and his father, Scott Richardson, had attended the Saints game against the Kansas City Chiefs. After the Saints lost in overtime, the Richardsons walked back to their car in a nearby parking lot around 3:45 p.m. and decided to catch a quick nap while traffic thinned out.

Sometime before 5 p.m., Scott Richardson woke up to find his son gone. At 5:15 p.m., the police received the phone call that a young man jumped off the sixth floor of the parking garage at 1661 Gravier St.

What happened in that short period of roughly 90 minutes haunts Richardson's family and friends. They refuse to believe the gregarious, church-going football star, who never struggled with alcohol, drugs or depression, would commit suicide. One week earlier, Jake had moved from Ohio to live with his parents outside of New Orleans and he had never been happier, Tissandier said.

In three weeks, Tissandier and his nephew were going to take a trip to Hawaii.

"Nobody wants to accept that a family member committed suicide," Tissandier said. "But I'm an extremely realistic person and if I thought that's what he did then that's what he did. But I really in my heart do not believe for a second he would do something like that."

Tissandier said his belief was confirmed when Jake's father called Thursday to describe security footage he had just seen showing the moments before his son's death.

The video shows Jake walking into the garage, Tissandier said. He climbs on a moped and tries to start it. Jake then walks into an elevator that takes him to the sixth floor. He walks off, paces back and forth, seemingly confused and glassy-eyed. Jake walks back into the elevator. A few minutes later, the doors reopen and he is still standing in the cab on the same floor. He did this two or three times, Tissandier said, walking into the elevator and apparently unable to figure out how to hit any of the floor buttons.

"You could see he was mad," said Tissandier recounting the details provided by Scott Richardson. "He looked like he was trying to get out of there."

At some point, Jake took off some of his clothes, which were found by the stairwell, said Officer Hilal Williams, an NOPD spokeswoman. After he partially disrobed, Jake walked over to the ledge, looked down then climbed over it, Tissandier said.

"He crawled over the side and was hanging on and started swinging trying to catch the ledge below," Tissandier said. "On one of the times he swung back, he lost his grip and went down headfirst."

At 5 a.m. Monday, 12 hours after Jake died, Dan McSurley's wife woke him up to give him the awful news. McSurley was Jake's football and wrestling coach at Clinton-Massie High School in Clarksville. He had known Jake since the boy was in kindergarten, and is close friends with his parents.

Rumors about Jake's death quickly spread throughout the school so McSurley gathered the football team Jake quarterbacked to two undefeated seasons and told them it was a tragic accident, even though at the time McSurley didn't have any evidence to back up his assertion.

That's when McSurley's players told him stories about Jake, how he would sleep over at their houses and wake up down the road in a barn or other unusual, faraway locations.

"I talked to his uncle and he said he knew when heard Jake fell exactly what happened because I guess it runs in the family," McSurley said. "It's just one of those weird things."

One in 10 children sleepwalk, but the majority outgrow it by the time they hit their teenage years, said Dr. Stuart Busby, chairman of the department of sleep medicine at Ochsner Baptist Medical Center.

Sleepwalking is often caused by sleep deprivation. The body requires a certain amount of sleep per day, and if it is deprived it goes into recovery mode. That's why people might sleep for 12 hours one night after averaging just four the previous three days, Busby said.

Most people, even when they are in a deep sleep, will wake up if they hear a loud noise or experience pangs of hunger or the need to go to the bathroom. For others, the body refuses to let them fully wake up, trapping them somewhere between deep sleep and consciousness. That results in sleepwalking, Busby said.

In this in-between state, people often perform simple rituals, like making something to eat or pretending to operate a vehicle. However, they are also capable of performing extremely complex and sometimes dangerous tasks.

In 1987, Canadian Kenneth Parks woke up, drove 14 miles to his in-laws' house, killed his mother-in-law with a tire iron and a knife, stabbed his father-in-law, then drove to a nearby police station. Officers testified that he seemed unaware of his surroundings or what had transpired. A jury later acquitted Parks, who used sleepwalking as a defense.

Busby did not want to specifically comment on Richardson's situation, but he said it is telling that the 19-year old was able to fall asleep so soon after an exciting football game, suggesting some level of sleep deprivation. People can fall into a deep sleep within 10 minutes of closing their eyes, he said. That would have given Richardson enough time to leave his father's car and sleepwalk to the parking garage in the 90 minutes between the end of the game and his death.

Sleepwalking is also something that can be common among family members, Busby said, which appears to be the case with the Richardsons.

Just a few weeks ago, Tissandier said he woke up in his cousin's room during a weekend vacation in West Virginia.

"I look over and see my cousin and his wife and I said, 'What are you doing in my bedroom?' And they started laughing and said, 'You climbed in here a half hour ago.' And I looked around and I wasn't in my room."

Tissandier, who recently spoke to his nephew about their shared condition, said the farthest he ever wanders when he sleepwalks is to the living room couch. Most sleepwalkers never venture outside their bedrooms, Busby said, but then there are more extreme cases, and they should seek the help of experts.

"If sleepwalking is happening in young children a few times and they're are not harming themselves, it's generally not a thing to worry about," Busby said. "But if it's happening with a teenager or an adult, I would advise they see a sleep specialist."

If only he had received such advice while Jake was alive, Tissandier said, he'd be planning a Hawaiian trip with his nephew instead of a funeral. Now, he's just hoping the coroner takes a deeper look at the case.

John Gagliano, chief investigator for the coroner's office, said Jake's death is a possible suicide but the investigation is ongoing. He refused to comment further.

Officer Frank Robertson said the video from the garage does not show Jake's fall, but would not comment on the family's description of the security footage. The NOPD's investigation is ongoing, but the coroner's office will make the final determination on the nature of Jake's death, he said.

"I understand the family's frustrations, and we sympathize, but we still have to follow the technicalities of the law," Robertson said.